MAYER, MARIA GOEPPERT

Physicist (1906 - 1972)

She won the Nobel prize in physics for her ground breaking work in
models of the nucleus of atoms. She was the first American woman to
win a Nobel Prize in physics (the first woman to ever win a Nobel prize
in physics was Marie Curie). She shared the prize with J.H.D. Jensen
and Eugene Wigner of Princeton, although she did her work
independently.

She was born in Katowice, Poland and received her doctorate degree from
the University of Gottingen, Germany, in 1930. She then married an
American chemist, Joseph Mayer and moved to the United States. She
worked at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University , and the
University of Chicago. She became a full professor at Chicago in 1959.
While at Chicago she was also affiliated with the Argonne National
Laboratory.